‘Hannibal’ Season 2, Episode 2 Recap: ‘Sakizuki’

Things aren’t going to end well for Hannibal Lecter’s psychiatrist on “Hannibal.”

Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier (Gillian Anderson) has long known that her sole remaining patient is formidable in dark ways. She knows he’s “dangerous,” and she tells him as much. Yet his recent actions — following up on his insatiable obsession with Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), his “flirtation” with the FBI — have pushed her to the edge. She no longer wants Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) as her patient, and she’s beginning to realize that he’s far more monstrous than she thought.

Worst of all for her prospects, though, is what she whispers to Will when she visits him in his cell: “I believe you.”

That must come as cold comfort for Will, whose options are limited. Either he can cop a guilty plea and go down easily — which FBI internal investigator Kade Purnell (Cynthia Nixon) would love, as it would save the bureau a lot of anguish — or he could fight on. Of course, that means he has to tangle with his psychotic frenemy, Dr. Lecter. Will chooses the latter by playing up his vulnerability to both Dr. Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) and Lecter and seeking their “help.” The imprisoned profiler knows he’ll have to let Hannibal back in his head — he never left, really — but he also knows that Lecter is obsessed with him, a potential weak spot in the stitching of his “human suit,” as Dr. Du Maurier describes it. Will is on his own, though. By the end of the episode, Dr. Du Maurier has skipped town to avoid ending up on Lecter’s dinner table.

The FBI can’t let go of Will, either. As Beverly Katz (Hettienne Park) realized in the first episode, she and the rest of Jack Crawford’s (Laurence Fishburne) team need Will’s empathetic imagination. Lecter may be the “new Will Graham,” but he’s not quite so keen on catching the killers out there, at least not right away. If his actions in solving the “mural” case that carries over from episode one are any indication, he’d rather act as an editor and patron to the artistic murderers that make up this show’s rogue’s gallery. In “Sakizuki,” he helps the muralist (Patrick Garrow) achieve his vision.

At the end of the season premiere, we saw the killer’s latest victim, Roland Umber (Ryan Field), writhing in terror at the bottom of a silo, completing the pupil of a great eye mural made of contorted human bodies. We see Umber, a former addict who’s built up a tolerance to the kind of opiates the killer uses to overdose his victims, escape the silo in one of the most disgusting and agonizing scenes you’ll see on television, period. Unfortunately, he plunges to his death fleeing his would-be killer, jumping off a cliff and smacking into rocks before landing in the river below. On his way, he runs through a corn field, which leaves traces on his sealed and preserved body, now missing chunks of flesh. After Umber’s body is found, Lecter, now pitching in at the FBI full-time, follows his nose to the silo.

The doctor doesn’t tell his fellow investigators, though. He wants to see what the killer has been up to, and so he looks down from his Godlike perch atop the silo to witness a clear vision: A great, dead eye seeking the absent gaze of a nonexistent deity. Hannibal isn’t quite satisfied with the work, though. “If God is looking down at you, don’t you want to look at him?” he asks the killer, freshly subdued and missing a leg. (Lopping the leg off helps Hannibal achieve his aesthetic goal, but he also keeps it for supper later.)

With this final touch, the killer’s pale figure fills the void left by Umber’s brown frame, and Man is reflected in the eye of God. Crawford’s team is baffled by what they find when they eventually show up. With Hannibal acting stumped, as well, there’s only one person to ask for help: Will.

Katz and Lecter visit Will with the case file and photos of the scene, particularly the God’s eye shot. Will imagines himself in the scene, but he’s disturbed by the white figure in the pupil. “One of these things is not like the others,” Will notes, tapping into his inner Big Bird. “One of these things just doesn’t belong.” When he realizes it’s the killer in the pupil, he’s struck with a horrifying image: The Stag Man of his nightmares looking down on him from the top of the silo as our beleaguered hero takes his place in the center of the mural.

Will Graham is now reflected in the eye of God, and God is Hannibal Lecter.

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